Haunt-full Sleep
by theindecisivewreck
Summary: Jinora discovered un-trained powers that came with visiting the spirit world. She and Kai both got stolen by memories that can never waver, even through sleep. Rated T to be safe and Kainora heavily hinted.
1. Chapter 1

**(A/N: Not the most proud of this story yet I was able to get through with it. I'm still not used to writing about Jinora and Kai so they both might be OOC. The only characters I can really say are mine-ish are the (un canon) family members of Kai.)**

* * *

Kai's back was thick with sweat and it stuck to the mattress like paste. Jinora always told him that dreams might be a sign of something from the spirit world. Now that the spirits roamed freely he didn't think they needed to send him any messages. Everything in that dream felt so real. Kai attempted to meditate, Tenzin always telling him to do so when panicked, but he found his mind too awry. Moments later to his surprise, a certain girl dipped his head into the room, shyly.

"Jinora?" Kai brought his voice to a whisper, too careful to wake anyone up. His face reddened at the sight of her, flustered to see the airbender. Jinora's eyes seemed enormous in the darkness of his room, like brown jewels glowing.

"I-I heard you mumbling in your sleep," she fiddled with the hem of her shirt nervously

"Oh, it was just a nightmare. That's all." He gave what could be considered a reassuring smile though Jinora knew him better than that. There was a certain tightness to his voice, one she heard when he worried about him- which is a voice she heard too often.

Jinora looked about the room, involuntarily, it looked perfectly clean to her surprise. No dust or any signs of possessions except a single book lying on the desk. Jinora remembered reading every character to him, teaching him how to read. Kai decided to continue to read the rest of it to himself, just to see if he could do it. That was months ago, he never returned it even when he said he was finished with it. Jinora assumed he never gotten around to returning it to her yet.

She sat next to him on his bed, holding one of his hands and giving it a tight squeeze. A light blush dusted on Jinora's face. From being around Kai so often, she learned how to control the blushing and the heart palpitations yet both habits would never completely die out. Such an intimate gesture made her heart want to race yet she tried to calm it gently.

"You can tell me anything. You know that, right?"

"It's just that…" Kai rubbed her forehead hastily with her free hand. Completely abandoned with what she was going to say a new idea sprang in her mind. "Can you stay here while I sleep?" Kai blushed furiously as he blurted it out, his words slurring together. Jinora felt a quickened pulse in Kai's hand.

"W-what?" She sputtered.

"I think my nightmares would stop if you were here with me" Kai, expecting a refusal to his out-of-the-blue request, was absolutely shell shocked when Jinora gave a nod.

"Y-you don't have to hug me or anything, it would just be nice knowing that you're here." He added quickly. Kai settled at the edge of the bed that touched the wall while Jinora sat at the front of the bed holding his hand. Jinora watched his breathing slow, his chest expanding with each breath. The whole peace of everything made her slip into sleep- making her absolutely shocked to find herself with Kai hiding away in a runned down house.

"Oh gosh, not this again." Kai's voice sounded small in the noise of the forest. Bushes and tangled trees surrounded her like fences. Only 1 path was available to him. He knew exactly what lied at the end of it, and he felt like retching at the thought of it. He swallowed the hysteria and walked through. Fungi and flowers littered the edges of the path, glowing bugs seemed to fly about her. He stopped before passing a familiar mushroom. The stump of it was thick and heavily built, the canopy part like an umbrella. It glowed a green color and shook, sending dust towards her, once he breathed it in he was back in the runned down home of his parents.

Kai remembered sleeping on a single blanket, surrounded by his 2 siblings. Chou, he remembered fondly. A little girl by the age of 6 in brown pig-tails curled up beside him, holding a scrap of what used to be a stuffed elephant-rabbit. Her skin tone followed after his father, pale in a rather milky color yet like their mother, emerald eyes shone under her eyelids. Beside him also was his little brother, only a year older than Chou, named Tsao. Tsao looked exactly like Kai in most aspects except his straight, black hair that went up to his round jaw line. Kai couldn't help but hold both of them tight, aware of what's going to happen.

Downstairs, he heard a susurrus. He could almost spot his parents downstairs, eyes with fright. He wanted to jump out of the bed and sucker-punch the unwanted guests yet he was paralyzed, every single time he has to stay back and listen. To follow the turn of events.

"Leave us alone!" He heard his mother yell, he remembers waking up at the time. Kai was finally able to get up and investigate, not before telling his siblings to stay where they are. As he walked down the stairs quietly a loud scream from his mother rang out. Kai went down further and hid at the corner of the hall. There on the ground was his mom lying down with her palms to the ground. A burn spiraled across her once flawless face.

"Zhou, Boss told us not to hurt the ladies!" A nasally voice sneered.

"As long as we don't kill her, its fine." Kai stood in place, frozen and shaking cowardly.

A familiar voice called, "Don't you lay a hand on Fei!" Kai heard a crack and a thud, regrettably one of his worst decisions he peered out to see his father, eyes glazed over. _Dead_… Then, as if anything could get any worse Kai heard footsteps from upstairs. None other than a little girl's voice, "Momma?" Tsao, leaning in behind the girl. _No!_ was what Kai wanted to scream out yet all came out was a choke. His mother replaced his own voice, screaming as loud as she could.

Kai found a burly man with a scarred face pick his mother by the collar of her shirt.

"Ya' got any more of them?" He gave a manic toothy grin. At first he saw a wave of panic over his mother's face and a quick glance toward Kai's direction. He read her eyes, _You'll be alright_.

"No," his mother spoke boldly. She stared at him, her eyes sad while his in disbelief. Dry sobs shook his chest as he heard the two men drive away with what was left with his family. _It's not real_ he repeated constantly in his head

"Kai?" Jinora was behind him, he didn't even hear her. Jinora's large brown eyes was filled with what he thought was pity but really sorrow. He felt a single tear slip down his cheek, leading to his lip and extinguishing to a salty taste.

"Jinora?" Kai said hoarsely. _That's new, she's never in this dream_ he thought incredulously. Jinora rushed up to hug him and as his chin settled in the crook of her collarbone everything melted around him. The corpse of his father, the thin walls that belonged to first home, everything. Kai hastily rubbed his eyes, he hated that dream. The memory seemed to always backhand him somehow. He learned to cut off all emotions of his past quickly. Jinora continued to look at him with sad eyes, enough to make him snap.

"I'm _fine_. Okay?" Jinora nodded, knowing it wasn't right of her to continue any further on the subject.

"You aren't supposed to be here," Kai said, his voice back to normal "well at least not in this dream…"

"This is your dream- I'm _inside_ of your head?" _You usually are but this is a weird time for you to pop up here_ he bit back the thought, mentally facepalming herself. It was hard to make sense of this particularly, besides everything that has happened.

"Are you sure you're not apart of the dream?"

"U-um, I hope not." She seemed rather worried about the whole ordeal.

"How could you prove it… Hmm. Aha!" He pulled him by the arm and stared right into his face. Kai could feel her breathe, a couple of inches probably only separated the both of them. He stared intensely, an adorable kind of surprise on Jinora's face. He let go of him, not as fast as he grabbed him, he lingered for a bit with her hand holding his sleeve.

"Nope, you're real. Let's go." She continued down the path of the forest.

"So, how can you tell I'm not apart all of.. this?" Jinora gestured to all around.

"Though how real my dreams are, I noticed how there are always differences in everything. "

"How do you know that there's like a small difference to me?" Kai thought a bit, choking back the response of '_Cause I memorized everything about you_.

"Uh, you just seem so _real." _It wasn't technically a lie, he could feel a sort of sharpness to her. Every other person in her dream had soft edges, almost blurry. They both continued down and with further speculation, Jinora noticed how familiar the forest was.

"It looks like we're in the spirit world."

"The spirit world? How could you- Oh right." Kai almost entirely forgotten on how she helped Korra in the spirit world. She was almost like a hero. Her ability for her to turn into a spirit jumped around at the back of his mind.

"Your powers are probably what brought you here!" His voice raised.

"Right, right. So… We're really both in your room sleeping?"

"U-um, I guess. Just wait." Kai pressed his fingertips to the sides of his head, holding Jinora in one hand to help bring out an image. The forest melted around them and they were back in Kai's room. Well- not quite. As if like ghosts, the two children got to watch themselves both soundly sleep. A blush crept up their cheeks as they saw the both of them holding hands, Jinora resting on Kai's shoulder. Kai crept up, he poked Jinora's cheek but all she did was stir, waving off the poke with a wrinkle of her nose.

"Hey!" Jinora whisper-yelled. Although Jinora couldn't see Kai's face he saw his shoulders shake with laughter. The bedroom went back to melting and they were back in the humming forest. Most people wouldn't consider nature noise real noise. Kai could hear the buzzing of bugs and several hoots from animals and it rang through his ears viciously. It was like a loud-quiet.

"So, how do we wake ourselves up?" Jinora asked, watching out not to step on prickly plants barefooted.

"I-I have no idea." A familiar green mushroom shot at both of them, powder stirring their noses.


	2. Chapter 2

"What's keeping Jinora and Kai so long?" Korra asked, she checked the training room for the two children with Asami, they weren't there for airbending practice.

"They aren't at the dining hall either." No person can sleep through the air horn for breakfast. The first time Korra slept on the ship, she almost set fire to the air horn speaker that woke her up.

"Maybe they're having a date~" Bolin sang, popping out of nowhere from a doorway of the hall.

"Pfft, why would the two of them-" Asami blinked. She did notice the both of them awfully close to eachother. "Now that you mentioned it, I can sort of see them dating."

"Yeah," Korra chuckled. "Those two lovebirds. Tenzin wouldn't be happy to hear about this." On schedule she heard Mako call down further down the hall.

"Guys, you might want to see this!"

When they came around the corner a rather fuming Tenzin watched the two of them sleep, both hands still held. If their life was a cartoon (which it obviously was not) there would be steam bursting from Tenzin's ears.

"Aww, they're sleeping together- that sounded better in my head." Bolin swore, continuing to skip and dance, even sing (Jinora and Kai, sitting in a tree~ K-I-S-S-I-N-G) by before Mako hissed "Quit it!"

"Why- Jinora!" The man bellowed angrily yet neither of the children stirred. Tenzin shook both of them and they didn't even wake up.

"Something's wrong, weird spirit energy seems to be radiating off of Jinora." Korra had her eyes closed, concentrating hard. "And Kai too." The avatar opened her eyes, "the energy is slowly fading, they'll probably be back to normal soon enough." All of them left one by one, Tenzin more reluctantly than others.

* * *

The forest melted by like sludge, and as Jinora tried to move her arms she found them tied to a post, the rope stinging.

"Well, this isn't my dream." Kai said before looking at the state of the airbender. He came by, trying to untie her, his hands slipped through her figure like smoke. Jinora and Kai were good at nonverbal communication with each other, which was fortunate for a badana kept Jinora's mouth tight. _I'm fine, don't worry_, Jinora could see the tenseness of his expression. She glanced around at, just as she thought, her family- all except her mother and newborn baby brother- tied to a post. A masked man, _Amon_, standing in front of a large crowd. A bead of sweat glistened down her forehead, she tried to ignore the charismatic slur of words that came from the man's mouth. She felt Kai lean in and whisper.

"It's not real." _Right, not real. You already gone through this._ Guards came by to restrain her, she saw Kai tighten his fist. All he could do is stand by and watch, just as when she watched as the burly men take away Kai's family. Guards untied the rope and pushed her to kneel before Amon. Glancing up, she saw cold eyes underneath with a matching cheshire cat smile. Cold fingertips pressed into her shoulder, she winced silently and heard Kai distantly pleading. As his fingers touched her sweat beaded forehead he melted, the sludge of his body burned her skin and she stepped away hastily. Everything turned to puddles leaving them back to the dreadful forest. Kai tackled her with a hug, his nose buried in her shoulder.

"You okay?" His voice muffled from the cloth of her shirt but he felt a nod from her. re-experiencing those memories wasn't a joyride he could tell. Kai could feel her shaking underneath his embrace. He couldn't imagine losing his airbending now that he was somewhat fond of it. They hugged in silence, before even realizing their feet were getting sucked in by through the ground, just like it did when Kai's dreams were about to end.

"We're finally leaving this spirit-forsaken place." Kai said in disgust, curling his lip. He always hated this particular dream, but now he sucked Jinora in along with it. Re-surfacing those memories was all his fault. Jinora managed to smile at him.

"See you on the other side." Jinora said, never letting go of his hand.

* * *

Sunlight crept through the windows and Kai felt a heavy weight on his shoulder. There sat Jinora, her head nestled into the fabric of his shirt, his arm around her. His face turned immediately red and tensed. Coughing obviously into his fist. Jinora blinked for a moment, waking up, dazed for a bit trying to recollect where was.

"Did you…?" He trailed off, Jinora knowing what he meant. Both of them hoped that it wasn't just themselves dreaming up each other, they hoped their friend was completely real. In response, the airbender nodded, a small grin on her face. Kai stood there looking at her, sort of just glad he didn't need to explain his dream to her, Jinora was completely complication-free. They both snapped out of the daze. Kai got up, heading to the dining hall where he would hear a strict lecture from Tenzin and a terribly sung song from Bolin.


End file.
